David Shoebridge:

The bill ensures that excessive penalties, such as lengthy prison sentences and exorbitant fines, are considered unnecessary and disproportionate limitations on the right to protest. It reads them down. The bill provides that, where state or territory laws conflict with this federal protection, those laws will be invalid, and they’ll be invalid to the extent of the inconsistency. This bill is an essential reset. Some might criticise it as being too reasonable and to proportionate a protection of the fundamental right to protest. I’ll face those criticisms.

What we’re doing here today is placing the protections that the federal government agreed to when it entered into these international agreements into domestic law.
I want to place on the record one person who was critical for me, my office and my team. I want to give a shout-out to my chief of staff, Kym Chapple, for the enormous work she’s done on this. I want to point out one person who was critical for getting this work done, former Greens leader Bob Brown.

Some 18 months ago I caught up with Bob in Hobart. Bob, the Tasmanian Greens and countless forest protectors in Tasmania have been putting themselves on the line to protect that old growth forest. They have seen firsthand how those state laws in Tasmania were designed to criminalise the very act of protecting a forest and standing up for those beautiful natural assets, arresting protesters and grabbing them, even before they get to the forest, on public land. I want to thank him for his courage, his support and his pressure in bringing this bill to the chamber today.

We call on all parties in this place, who live and breathe only because we have a functioning democracy, to join us today to legislate for the right to peaceful and essential protest